A New Nectar Plant

 Most of you are very familiar with my new nectar plant. This grows not only in the tropics, but also in the sub-tropical climates. This is the common cosmos, scientifically known as Cosmos bipinnatus. The most commonly growing colors in our country are the yellow and orange colors. I found them everywhere, which becomes unrully and unsightly when the leaves are drying and the seeds are already drying on the plant.

Lately, i saw a friend has this red one and the butterflies are alighting, nectaring on them. So i asked for seeds which she sent November of last year. I immediately planted them, that to my surprise they flowered immediately when they are just about less than a foot tall. Their life cycle was too short because they die after flowering. I gathered all the seeds and stored them until this years rainy season again.

To my surprise not even one seed germinated. Probably, they belong to the recalcitrant seeds that must immediately be planted upon maturity. Fortunately, there is already this seedling which was already growing when i planted the seeds. This dropped to the soil last year but got stored in the soil and germinated after a few months. I wonder why that is possible! That remains to be a question to me till now.

We can see that the plant is already very tall even prior to flowering. It is more than 6 ft tall. I searched and found that it is a very well studied plant. It is photoperiodic and the internodes elongate much as a response to long days. No wonder my seedlings last year were very short at flowering because they are planted already during the short days. Hmmm, now i can manipulate that height next time, by choosing the photoperiod desired to attain an intended internode length. That would be interesting. 

By the way, i am forgetting that i got those seeds from a distant province because they are loved by her butterflies. To my surprise, i have yet to see any butterfly nectaring on my blossoms! A lot of them nectar on surrounding flowers, but not one even tried to alight on the red cosmos. What is happening! I only surmise that maybe there are more preferred flowers around it. Or probably, there are still very few cosmos flowers to attract the butterflies. I don't know.

 So i just content myself in taking different angles of the flowers, the back against a lot of bokeh as above....

...the side angle with the pollens showing...

...or the top with the petals slightly angling upwards! 

I am a bit disappointed that butterflies are not nectaring on them. But still i will again plant those seeds to have a patch with more flowers to invite the butterflies. Next time i have many results to observe, many parameters to test. That makes the unexciting more exciting, don't you think so! Let us all see the next generation of red cosmos with moderate stands, lots of flowers on a single patch, shorter internodes and with lots of butterflies....See you next time around.

Floral Friday Fotos